Take It to the Limit Part VI, Defining Moral Margins

It's good to see everyone tonight. If we can bring the lights up just a little bit, please, so everyone can see the outlines. And I want you to grab your outlines out of the notes. We are in the last of this series, as Pastor David mentioned a couple of times. And I want to thank you for your feedback. I was told by the folks who do our CDs and tapes that we have distributed more CDs and tapes in this series than any in the last three years. And I think it's because this is, for all of us, along the way there have been parts of this series that have been very, very relevant for where we are. And we've been talking about the fact that we live in a culture that very effectively lures us into its mindset and then causes us, sometimes unconsciously, to max out our lifestyle. Whether that's by taking our schedule to the limit or filling our minds to overload or to taking our finances to where we don't have anything left and are fighting about what's supposed to be gone, going where. And we come to the point where we push God out to the very perimeter of our lives and then wonder why, as believers or folks who are trying to understand God's will for life, why it doesn't seem to be working. And remember, we've said numerous times, it's worth saying again, that relationship happens in the margin. Relationship with God and with others happen when we are able to develop margin in our lives. Now, margin was defined early on as the space between where we could be and where we are. Whether that's time at the end of the day or emotional headroom when we're feeling stressed out or financial space if something unforeseen comes along. And many of you have said, you know, I just need to look at my life again and sort of reevaluate because to be honest, I don't have much margin. Tonight's message might be the most important of all. And I say that because of the consequences. I wanna talk about moral margins because I guess in my experience in over 25 years of pastoring, nothing has had more consequence in people's lives than bad decisions in this area. And this being Valentine's weekend, I'm gonna talk specifically, as I'm sure you've picked up by now, about sexual margin and how we are affected in dealing with our sexuality. And whatever you believe about this, friends, I'm sure if you're at all like in tune, you realize that the culture is just moving inexorably toward no holds barred, I mean, anything goes kind of mindset. It's getting pretty bizarre. How many of you have been watching sort of like the reality shows? Don't put your hand up. I don't wanna have you come to confession, but this week I think they hit a new low on are you hot or whatever it was called. And looking at people just kind of based just purely physically on their appearance. And then the Simon lookalikes or wannabes who would find fault with people for the way their hair was or their teeth or whatever and on and on we could go. We live in a culture that's just flat out looking at this stuff purely at what it does in terms of our flesh. And I wanna talk tonight about the fact that everyone has limits when it comes to morality, don't we? I mean, let's get that clear. It's not like there aren't any limits. I mean, we either have self-imposed limits because we grew up in a home that said, hey, this is right and this is wrong. Maybe you didn't have any limits at home, but you found the Lord in your life. And as a Christian, you're trying to define your limits by the Bible in some way. Maybe you have some relationally motivated limits. Maybe you were in a peer group that thought this was okay and that was okay, so you kind of went with that flow and then that changed as time changed. And we all know there's legal limits. There's just some things you cannot do because they are legally inappropriate and you could end up being prosecuted for them. So, I mean, everyone has limits and we all have these things in our mind that if some people might say, well, that's okay and that's okay, but that's really not okay. So, I mean, there are limits. The question always becomes in every one of these areas, are we gonna let the culture set the limits or are we going to say, God, I wanna have the courage and the foresight to see what you say and then, now listen, here's the hard part, and then to act on it? Because tonight, I don't think too many of you are gonna disagree with what I'm gonna say, but the question will be when you walk out of those doors, are you gonna have the courage to act on what I'm gonna say or just simply somehow rationalize your situation as being unique? Now, here's the real twist about this area, particularly when it comes to morality and what culture does. You see, with morality and the culture, it sends a double message and the message is this. It wants you to just go out as far as you can. It wants to bait you to go, to experiment a little bit more, to push it to the unusual, perhaps, the exciting, the forbidden, the mysterious, just to sort of go where you really shouldn't go. But if you go too far, if you cross over the line, if you do something that suddenly is just not exactly right or the outcome of which wasn't foreseen, then that same culture is wickedly unforgiving, isn't it? Have you noticed that? That same culture can just nail you to the wall. And so, you're encouraged to just get out there and experience your sexuality, but if you become pregnant, oh, man, you should have been smart. You should have done this and you should have protected yourself that way and this way and so on and so on. If you become addicted to sexual behavior, well, then, you've got a problem and you're a bit of a pervert or whatever it might be. The culture pulls you in. It says, go for it. And friends, I mean, this was mild, let's be honest. Everything we saw here was mild compared to what's really out there. And yet, if you go over the line, let's talk about Michael Jackson for just a moment or maybe we shouldn't, but let's just be honest there. Here he was, elevated as an icon in the media, but now Michael Jackson has apparently gone over the line. I mean, we hinted at this a number of years ago, but now he's gone over the line and the media now is just nailing him to the wall. I mean, in every venue, just, well, he's just sick. And I'm sure you're smart enough to know that advertising and all kinds of commercial media, I mean, they spend incredible amounts of money trying to figure out what's gonna motivate you to do something beyond where you are in order to engage them. Some of you know, I have a son that's in that industry and he's doing his best to try to not just make it, but to stand as a light. And I want you to know firsthand, there's enormous resources that are trying to figure out how to get inside your head to make you do some things in order to fulfill yourself, or at least to promise that, that you might buy their products to help you get that sort of, you know, this fantastic experience that maybe your mind has created. And yet, once, you know, if you buy into it and you go over the line and you go a little too far, well, you know, you just, you blew it. It was your mistake. Why weren't you thinking? And many times that same culture that baited you along now leaves you to suffer and may even make it difficult for you. And this happens in a lot of different venues. And we're gonna talk about some of those specifically tonight. Men are kind of, you know, they're pulled into this whole thing and, you know, women dress provocatively and do this and that, but then a guy does the wrong thing and makes the wrong advance. And now there's a sexual harassment case. And then, you know, I could flip it over and I can tell you about, you know, how guys will do all this and all that, and then trick a woman and then, you know, all ends up that she is hurt and violated and so on. These things are all over the place. Go as far as you can go, go as close to the line as possible, make it as exciting and as different and as alluring as you can, but don't mess it up. Don't mistreat, don't get a disease, don't hurt your family, don't get pulled into it. And that's the tension that we live in all the time. And by the way, how many of you are just naturally sort of inclined to kind of live at the line anyhow? I mean, how many of you, when it comes to any limits, well, let me just ask a question. If the speed limit says 65, how many of you go 55? If it says 65, how many of you go just, I mean, you go 65 and you're just happy as you can be? And how many of you say 65, you immediately do the math and say, you know, they allow you 10% of that, I mean, so you go 71 and that's where you live. See, and whatever it is, I mean, maybe for you, it's a curfew. Maybe the curfew is I'm supposed to be in at midnight, but, you know, do you show up at home at 11 if your curfew is midnight? When do you show up? I mean, you turn the wheel onto the driveway at 1201 thinking, wow, I made it. Or if it's a diet, you know, and it's 2,800 calories a day and you're counting your calories and you get to 2,800, well, you know, I can have one more. And we're all, aren't we, we're wired that way. We're wired to just go a little past what the limit is because that's just in our makeup for the most of us. But here's the difference, in all those areas, I mean, yeah, there's a little bit of retribution. So you get a speeding ticket or maybe, you know, you put on a couple extra pounds or whatever. I mean, the consequences aren't all that big a deal, but morally speaking, if you cross over this line, if you cross over this line, the consequences morally are incalculable many times. Your whole life can change on a decision you make in one night. You can lose your family. You can contract a disease that you'll never get free of. You can lose your self-esteem. You can create a moral and emotional spiral that pulls you down into deep depression that may ruin you for the balance of your life. Society's pulling us in, all these messages all the time. And yet if we go over the edge, society doesn't pay the price, you do. And if you don't have moral margins, the chances of you falling into a place where somehow you find yourself doing time, hard time emotionally are very real. And this is why the apostle Paul writes so powerfully in 1 Corinthians 6. Let's read this. I don't know if we already put it up there. It is, let's read it together. It's on your outline. For those of you who have good eyes, read it on your notes. Flee from sexual immorality. And notice that I underlined that. Paul doesn't mince words here. He says it boldly. The word flee is the word to run from or the word fugo. Say fugo with me, fugo. It means to run. I mean, it means to turn on the energy in order to escape. It means to run with speed. There was a car, I think Renaud made it called a fugo a few years ago, it was a terrible car, but they may use that name. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. I'm gonna talk about that in a moment. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you've received from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body. Paul says flee or run from sexual immorality. Don't flirt with it. Don't play games with it. Don't go as close to the line as you can without going over it, but flee from it. And when you see it coming, if you're wise, you'll obey what the apostle Paul commands. God knows what you know. That in this era of sexuality, the consequences are enormous. And once you cross over the line, it's very, very difficult to go back. And what makes this, again, so hard is the fact that peer pressure, and sometimes, friends, this can go on, and you're not even aware of it. I had multiple conversations this week in preparation for the message, and it's interesting to hear different people's take on this. If you're absorbed in certain things in your life, and maybe you're not even thinking it, and David mentioned as we started, this might not, in your mind tonight, be a very important message, because you feel happy at home, and life's good, da-da-da, but here's what you need to understand. And just so suddenly, if you put your guard down, because of all the bombardment, and all the messages, you can find yourself pulled into something that can be very, very difficult. And all these different things, I mean, clearly, clearly, and I'm gonna talk specifically to the singles tonight for a little bit, you are the ones that have the biggest bullseye on your lives. And again, the TV things are just driving me crazy. The bachelor this, the bachelor at that, Joe Mindless, all these different things. These are all ways that they're trying to pull us to think about stuff that's just so beyond what's appropriate relationally. Bible says flee from it. But on the positive side, I wanna make this statement. The track record of people who follow biblical wisdom is really compelling. I have never met anyone who said, it all fell apart when I pulled back from the edge. Or my life really got boring when I started to live according to God's boundaries. I've never had anyone say, I regret the day I decided to become more careful about my morality, about my sexual limits. I've never met anyone said, I wish I had more partners, done more experimentation and taken more risk. Never met one. The Lord says, just like I want you to have margin in your schedule and in your finances and in your emotions and in the workplace, I want you to have some margins in your moral decisions. And then Paul goes on to say this. And I said I was gonna come back to this. I wish he'd said a little bit more, but look at the second half of verse 18 here. He says, he who sins sexually sins against his own body. All other sins, in other words, when you cheat or you steal from someone or you lie or whatever, apparently there's an impact that's out there that you know about. And there's consequence and there may be some repercussions back your way. But interestingly, the Bible clearly says that in this particular sin, it is you, it is you that pays the dearest price. Many years ago, when I was just coming out of seminary, Jack Hayford, who was a visiting professor at Fuller Seminary at the time and pastor of church on the way out of Van Nuys, California, gave a message on this. And I'll never forget how clearly and compellingly he made the point that what Paul is saying is in this particular activity, you are self-destructing more than you're hurting others. That's the part that we don't really normally gather, but that's exactly, as I think we'll see by the end of the evening here, is true. We're the ones that end up paying the price. We're the ones who mentally and emotionally never get over it. We're the ones who wonder what's happened now that this has gotten to where it is. Now, I wanna be very clear. Is sexual sin forgivable? Absolutely. Is it any worse in the sense of God's atoning blood through Jesus Christ being able to suffice? Absolutely. I don't want anyone to, who if you've had a very, you know, a promiscuous past, I don't want you to think that God can't or won't forgive you. It's no worse in the eyes of God than any other sin. But the Bible's saying what's more difficult is your ability to forgive yourself. What's more difficult is for you to wipe the slate clean in your own mind. And so I'm convinced after 25 years of dealing with this, that people are more affected and have more difficulty overcoming this than any other kind of sin. And it intertwines with every part of the life. There's a relationship between psychological health and moral decisions, between personal esteem and moral decisions, between how you trust people and moral. Listen, even how you trust God and moral decisions. And the longer you go on in sexual compromise, the harder it is for you to trust. Trust God and people. That's why it's sin against your own body. And so Paul says very clearly, don't flirt with it. Don't mess around with it. Flee from it. Find some margin. And if you are just a little bit different, if your friends think you're a little extreme, we're gonna talk about that tonight a couple of times. So what? It's you who have to live with your decisions. It's your life. It's not theirs. So if the one who suffers the most from moral failure is you then it's up to you to make some decisions about what you're gonna do. Let's turn your outline over and I'm gonna get kind of nosy and specific. So here we go. And happily, I'm not taking any vote on how much you like me at the end of this sermon. But here we go. So not a lot of teenagers here tonight. There will be a lot more tomorrow. Pastor Scott Stevens is here and I've asked him to make sure that the students are here. And by the way, I'm so blessed. I mean, you should be too. We have about 300, is that right Scott? About 300 middle school students coming tonight for an overnight time here at the church. And I'm just telling you those folks need our prayers, obviously the leaders, but I'm so glad that these kids have a place to go where they can find a values-based ministry to give them an alternative. Because as I'm gonna... Friends, listen, let's get real honest. In sixth and seventh grade, kids are starting to learn about oral sex now. Okay? I don't mean learn about it just like in their head. Our teenagers are, I mean, they're just targets. If you're a teenager here tonight, or if you're a parent of a teenager, here's what I wanna tell you. The way for you to develop some moral margins is this. You need to predetermine how far you're going to go sexually before you ever start. You need to draw the line in the sand before you ever get out there and start moving around and trying things. Everyone's gonna have a limit. You're either gonna have your limit that's gonna be put on you by your friends and by TV and movies and magazines, or you'll have your limit that will be something that you've established in relationship with your heavenly father. Now, if your limits are far enough back from sexual activity of any kind, then if you get into a situation where maybe just, you know, one night when nobody's around and you start moving in a direction you shouldn't go, the limit will be far enough that you won't go to a place where you're gonna have lasting consequences and deep regrets. And there are those. There's a fairly strong group of people out there who are advocating absolutely no dating. I think that's a decision that you have to work through. I'm not gonna stand up here and say that's the only way that's right, but that's an option. But at the very least, your margin needs to be far enough from sexual activity so that if you get into a place where you're getting kind of heated up one night, that you realize, man, I am right here and I just went over here and I am not going there, and you can back up. You can pull back from the line. Now, if you're here tonight and you're a teenager, you're a parent of a teenager, you'll hear things like, well, hey, all my friends are doing it. I mean, I'll be so out of it. But you see, that's a lie. Fact is, there's a slice of the media that just keeps telling us that everybody's doing it, and there's a slice of the youth culture that's doing it, but not everybody's doing it. In fact, last year, Time Magazine and MTV, those two conservative input poll organizations, had a poll, and this is what they published. I wrote it down. It said, and this is, again, MTV and Time, 56% of teenagers wanted to abstain from sexual activity until they were married. Now, you might not be the greatest in math, but that's over half, okay? More than half of the students don't want to have sexual involvement until marriage. Why? Because they are realizing, they've seen what's happened to their friends. They've realized that there's physical and emotional consequences that are paid. But you see, you don't hear about those stories. You don't hear the stories about the kids that said, no, it's not a story to say, hey, guess what we didn't do last night? Yeah. And all you hear about is the people who say, well, guess what? I was out, and guess what? And you know what? How much of that's just sort of like talk, you know? Guess what we did? Well, most teenagers are pretty good at telling stories, too. Most teenagers want to wait, and now they're being given just a little more encouragement. I want to tell you about something that's coming up, parents, listen. In about six weeks, I think it's six or seven weeks, first weekend of April, is that right? Up here on the side screens, we're having a presentation called the Silver Ring Thing. It's gonna be here at North Way. This is something that was started locally by Danny Patton, a friend of mine, a guy who's been in ministry for a long, long time. And it's all about guys, girls, dating, love, second chances, and right choices. And it's about making a commitment to abstinence. And I understand this is like taken off nationally all around the country. We're expecting close to 1,000 students that night. Is that right, Scott? So parents, be praying for that, and be telling your kids about it. It's coming up. You'll learn more. Why? Because we're trying to help kids realize that it's, watch now, it's cool to take a stand. It's cool to say, I matter so much that I'm not gonna give myself away. The most valuable thing I have is my purity and my virginity, and I'm gonna keep it. And if I'm a teenager tonight, I know all your friends will this and that, and you'll hear it all the time, but you know what? It's cool to say, I'm gonna wait. And beyond that, it's blessed of God. Ultimately, you have the decision. You say, well, you sound so much like a pastor. You sound like my parents. Well, let me encourage you to go to someone who you think's kind of cool, you know, and ask them, well, what would they do if they had to do again? Just go ahead and go up to somebody, you know, go to Scott or somebody who's cool, and say, what would you do? And I think you'll hear them tell you because they care about themselves and about God, it's smart to wait. It's smart. At the very least, if you're a teenager, you should ask this question. When someone says, how far can I go then? How about this? Go as far as you want the person that you're going to marry to go just before you marry them. Oh, well, I want my spouse to be really pure. Okay, there you go. Why don't you do the same thing? Well, because I'm 15 and I, you know, I want to try some things and it looks so exciting and I watch, you know, movies and I see this and you know, it is good. And I want to be very clear here. God is pro-sex. It was his idea. It's a great thing. It's a wonderful gift, but he wants you to enjoy it in the context in which he designed it. Well, my friends won't be my friends anymore. Well, so what? Well, there'll be other people that'll be your friends and there'll be people that will help you to stand on your conviction. Let me talk to single adults for just a little bit. Single adults. This palette adds a few new colors, doesn't it? If you're single because you've never married or maybe you're single again, the difference is A, you're a lot farther along, you understand a lot more and you've been bombarded a lot longer and it's likely, I would expect, if statistics are right, 85 or so percent of you have already had a sexual experience of some kind. And so you're thinking, you know, now what do I do? I had a conversation with a woman a while back who said, well, is this abstinence idea that you're kind of talking about, is that just for young people? And I asked her this question. I said, well, let me ask you. Has sex outside of marriage made your life better or more complicated? And she paused for a moment and I could see that she was getting a little bit emotional. And even though it might have been, in your mind, wonderful for a night or a week or a month, invariably, sex outside of marriage complicates your life. And I'll never forget that time that she started just to tear up a little bit and I said, you know what? You don't need a verse or a sermon or a preacher. Use your brain. It's funny, we know that it's not comfortable. In fact, none of us would like to show up in a grocery store and run into somebody that we had like a sexual encounter with and be standing with someone we're engaged with. Hey, come meet Bob, you know. I was like, I don't know. It's just not, you know, it doesn't fit. It doesn't connect. It's not right. So the way to moral margin for a person who is single or single again is this. You need to make some very difficult choices and then you need to get a very wonderful support group around you that will stand with you in those choices. In fact, the more active you've been, the more margin you need because it's more difficult for you to say no. In fact, in some cases, I'd have to say if you've been single for a while after being married or if you've never been married, it may be for you the only way to go is just to say, you know what? I'm just not going to put myself in any situation where I can be tempted to go over the line which means I just may not have to date. I may have to say no. And a couple people are thinking, you know what? I thought he was doing okay till right there. Right there, he just lost me. That's stupid. Well, maybe it is, but maybe it's not. Maybe you value what God thinks of you more than what your own passion needs are at this time. And it's not to say that it is easy, but most of us have come to honestly realize once you get into the dating process, I think the little skit, kind of in a humorous way captured, it becomes almost impossible, doesn't it? To draw those lines. We were talking to a guy who was single. This is a pretty well-accomplished guy, nice looking guy and everything. He said, you know what? I've had a lot of relationships and I don't know what to do. Now I want to, and he had become a Christian and he said, I want to start living for God, but I don't know how to do this because in my world, having a good date meant ending with sex. And having a bad date meant I went home. And we finally talked that through a little bit and finally came to the conclusion, you know what? Well, maybe the only real solution for you would be to say, well, I'm just not going to date for a while. I'm going to find other ways. And here's a positive thing. There's a good fellowship here at Northwood, the Cafe 2030s, where you can connect with other people your age in a corporate way. And you can do things together and you can relate and you can have meaningful friendships and connections without getting into sexually compromising situations. I guess the biggest question for someone in this situation is this, to whom do you belong really? If you determine that you were bought with a price, if you are a person who believes in Christ, if you say with Paul, it's no longer I that live, the Christ that lives within me, then the question doesn't become, well, how far can I go? The question is, who do I belong to? And I want to recommend a book to you that will go a lot farther into this conversation than I can, written by Elizabeth Elliott called Passion and Purity. There it is up on the screen. We may have a couple of copies in the book, so if you want a copy though, just put on the communicator. I highly recommend this in a very thoughtful way. Elizabeth Elliott makes the case, a strong case for this, for the fact that there's something about the person who's willing to honor God and themselves above their passions that takes on a quality that you don't find very often in our culture. Wouldn't it be great to see something beyond just indulgence? Wouldn't it be great to see people who would say, I stand for something, and even though it's difficult, I'm not saying it's easy, wouldn't it be great to be able to say, I belong to God, I belong to Christ, therefore I'm going to honor God with my body? And I think that person will be honored by God. Not easy. Finally, number three, married couples. And by the way, I want to say to singles and teens, here's the bad news, when you get married, it doesn't all go away. Am I right, married couples? It's not like, oh, okay, everything's fine now. Married couples find themselves after usually a period of bliss and sort of the whole honeymoon season realizing that now I have a life to live and they got some adjustments to make. And in our culture, married couples remain the target of a whole lot of attack and the enemy's very, very effective at dividing couples. And I've done my share of marital counseling over the years. Here's my question. How far would you want your spouse to go to protect himself or herself from unnecessary sexual temptation? How far would be too extreme? Well, I'd want my wife or my husband to be very, very careful because I wouldn't want them to, well, then that should be the same standard that you apply. Now, at times we can find this very challenging. You might be in a little, ladies, you might be in a little study group and just the conversation goes to casually talking about how well you're getting along and others seem to be getting along so much better with their spouse than you are. And you kind of wonder, well, what's wrong? What's going on with me? Or, you know, and guys talk this way. And you know what? It isn't long before we start questioning whether or not we're really doing all that well. And then you have the reality of many of you are maxed out in the other margins of life and there's nothing left to give really at home when it comes to intimacy. And so because of the job or jobs and kids or kids and activity or activities, you're just tired. And so have you found this intimacy requires a lot of energy? I'm not talking just sexual, I'm just talking connecting. And so you know what we've done in the last seven, eight, 10 years, there's been a big change on the landscape in terms of married couples trying to make up for the intimacy gap. And it's right here. This little beauty, huh? I promised Scott I wouldn't drop this. But you see, now, I call this the great substitute. This is the great substitute. Because now I can get online and some of you ladies think, he's thinking pornographic images. Yeah, that's one of the great substitutes. But I'm also thinking chat rooms and I'm also thinking, you know, getting online and talking to some guy who really understands me because my husband won't or can't. And millions of Americans now are finding substitute intimacy right here. And the difficulty is that it doesn't usually end right here. It usually goes somewhere else and ends up with, you know, a heart that's being pulled away from the person they really loved or a mind that gets into things that are distorted and inappropriate. And there's a lot of pain, a lot of pain out there in marriages these days. And so here's just a few things that I wanna say to married couples. And they may be a little extreme and I have to wrap up quickly. So here we go. Married couples, you need to make time to be together. I'm gonna be proactive to start. The number one way to avoid sexual temptation is to make time to be together, to communicate and to be intimate and to make the investment. And I'm baffled by you married couples who don't make time for each other. I am baffled by couples that haven't been on a date in five years. I'm baffled by couples that are afraid to leave their kid for a night for fear somehow the kid won't love them anymore. Here's a little revelation worth the price of admission. Your kid may whine and cry and scream when you walk at the door and you know what? They'll be there when you get back. And they'll love you just as much. You need to make time for yourself. And if you say, well, I can't afford a babysitter. In this church, some small groups have figured out a way where they rotate and they take turns watching the other kids so everyone can have a date night. You gotta make some investment, you gotta make some time. Let me just say quickly a couple other things. Positively speaking, if you find yourself really hurting, and I know some of you are really hurting, I'm not minimizing that. I mean, if the distance has grown this far, maybe you're saying, how do I get started? My husband doesn't listen at all. And I'll have people come up, I'll have women come up and say, you know, what you said tonight is really important. I need to talk to you. And I'll say, we